Great to be in the Attila the Hun chair behind the golden EIB Mike.
Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
As you know, El Rushbo in Philadelphia for the Rush to Excellence tour up there.
I'm wondering, sternly, did Donovan McNabb get his tickets?
He was calling, I know, Sandy Berger now.
I am Jason Lewis, by the way, Minnesota's Mr. Wright, proud once again to sit in for the great one.
Sandy Berger stole, we know, highly classified papers from the National Archives, destroyed them, lied to investigators about it.
Therefore, he became an unpaid advisor to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Now, I don't know if you heard about this.
Apparently at their first meeting, did you hear what Sandy Berger said to Hillary Clinton?
Are those documents in your pants?
I thought that was kind of odd.
It wouldn't be the right thing to say to went a long way for that one.
Not certain it worked.
1-800-282-2882 is I want to get back to Shona in just a second, but one more thing, Shona, before we get back on the concept of whether we're torturing people and what sort of rights unlawful enemy combatants have.
Here we go again.
Representative Charles Wrangel, according to the Politico, is poised to introduce the mother of all tax bills, a tax increase of more than $1 trillion.
You know, why is it everything is a tax increase for every single malady?
As you remember, last summer we had a bridge collapse here in the Twin Cities over the Mississippi River.
Naturally, even though we had a $2.2 billion state surplus, all of the liberal in the media here, all of the liberal Democrats here, got to have a tax increase.
Our transportation department, Representative James Oberstar, the demagogue-in-chief here in the great state of Minnesota, runs down to the site before the bodies are even out of the river, declaring this is living proof, we must have a federal gas tax increase, too.
Healthcare got to have a $10 tax on cigars.
Now, they did, in fairness, what did they do?
Ratchet that back to three bucks a cigar?
But originally it was $10 to pay for the S-CHIP adult health insurance expansion.
And that could amount to $14 billion a year by 2011 if this expansion goes through on S-CHIP.
When we've got so many other sensible alternatives, if you reform the tax code, if you follow the plan the president put forth a couple of years ago and that Giuliani and a number of the Republican candidates are proposing that say, well, the corporations shouldn't have the tax deduction for health care.
Individuals should.
If we don't disabuse ourselves of the notion that somebody else ought to pay our health care, we'll never be able to be in control of our health care.
And this would affect 100 million people.
All you do, you can solve the health care crises, if you want to call it a crises, overnight in America.
You give individuals the $15,000 deduction the president was talking about, even if their health care plan only costs them $8,000.
You give them that.
You take it away from business.
They'll replace your health care benefits with cash.
You'll be getting a larger salary.
With that larger salary, you buy health care in a nationwide pool to get out from under the onerous state mandates.
Once again, here in the land of 10,000 loons, and that's just the legislature, you have to cover, if you want to write a traditional indemnity insurance policy in Minnesota, you have to cover substance abuse, AIDS, acupuncture.
How about port wine stain removal?
So, gee, I wonder why health care costs are going up.
Not to mention, of course, we have mental health parity already.
Now, they want it at the federal level, thanks to Patrick Kennedy and so-called Republican Jim Ramsded.
They're trying to push this on the ⁇ all you do is drive up the cost of health insurance when you tell people they can't buy just catastrophic health care.
You combine that with the HSA.
You reform the tax code.
You have a nationwide pool that undercuts the state mandates.
You would solve for 100 million people the health care so-called crisis overnight.
Instead, what are we doing?
The Democrats in Congress, as well as a few Republicans, are saying, oh, no, no, no, I got a better idea.
Let's raise the cigarette tax to a buck a pack.
Let's raise the cigar tax to three bucks a cigar.
And let's try to encourage people to leave their private health care system to get into an S-CHIP-style plan for able-bodied adults who are no longer low-income.
This is clearly an attempt to round up everybody to get ready for Hillary care.
And as I said earlier, friends, this cannot be overemphasized.
There is no way we have enough money to cover everybody's wants and needs for health care.
Going to the emergency room for this, having three or four tests done for this.
The overconsumption of it all.
And so what will happen?
The government will say, since we're paying the bill, we're not paying for this and this and this.
We're not going to build an MRI here.
Look at Canada.
We're not going to do this.
If you're a smoker, you're really SOL because we're just not going to cover advanced treatment.
You think I'm making that up?
They're already trying that in the U.K. Government must ration because they can never afford the unlimited demand that is free government-run health care.
So you will lose control.
Of course, everybody will be impoverished, but at least we'll all be equal.
I guess that's the goal.
But anyway, getting back to this tax increase of $1 trillion to get rid of the AMT, a 4% surcharge on those nasty rich, according to the Politico.
You know what the nasty rich, do you know how they're defined according to Representative Wrangell, at least according to the Politico?
Anybody making more than $100,000 a year, unmarried, couples making more than $200,000 a year.
Now, folks, anybody in the United States of America that makes over $200,000 a year already pays, according to the IRS, 47% of all the income tax collected.
47%.
So you've got the uber-rich, and I don't think it's uber-rich, but that's what people would say.
And that's remarkable stuff if you think about it.
They're paying half the income tax burden.
The top 1%, if you're up there around $355,000 a year, you're paying 35%.
The top 10%, almost $100,000 a year, while you're paying 68% of the income tax burden.
Oh, the bottom 50%, they pay 3.3% of all income taxes collected.
In fact, the bottom 40% of income earners in America literally have no income tax liability.
So naturally, the Democrats want a tax cut for them with no income tax liability and want to raise it on those who are pulling the wagon.
You wonder how long they'll continue to pull the wagon.
Do you not?
1-800-282-2882 Shona in Endicott, New York.
Kind enough to wait through the break there.
I do appreciate that.
Go ahead and make your second point on this torture case, if you want to call it that.
Well, if you take a look at John McCain, I mean, he was tortured and he didn't break.
You know, some guys are going to tell you whatever you want to know.
The information could be outdated by the time you find out.
I just don't think you get what they say they're getting.
You know, it just doesn't work.
And it would be better if you rounded up everybody that they know and simply questioned them.
Somebody's just going to be so scared they'll tell you everything.
Well, look, the CIA's view is that these quote-unquote treatments, and they argue that it's not torture, keeping people awake, keeping them in a cold environment, and yes, even waterboarding.
By the way, a number of our toughest military men and women go through waterboarding in training.
Is that torture?
I believe the reason why they do it is to toughen them up.
If you can make it through the business.
So should the policy be we can do this to our military trainees, but we can't do it to an al-Qaeda captive?
I would think that you have to wonder what you're trying to do to your own soldiers to do that.
I would think that the reason why they're doing that is so that they don't break under torture.
Wait a minute.
Now, the purpose we are told not to get rough with any al-Qaeda operative or any particular detainee is to set ourselves above our enemies.
And so, in fact, you've heard people like Senator Kerry and others say, look, if we want our soldiers to be protected when they're captured, why we can't do this to the enemy.
And that's why Biden was on this for a while.
That's why we shouldn't torture, quote unquote.
The only problem with that is, guess what?
You can go back to every arms control agreement.
You can go back to World War II or the agreements after World War I when Germany was violating those agreements that led up to World War II.
They don't work because our adversaries don't care about what we do.
That's a bogus argument.
That's a bogus argument.
Okay, that argument, I know they make it.
I disagree with that argument, and it means nothing.
Wait a minute, are you disagreeing with my point that our enemies will torture us no matter what, or are you disagreeing with Messrs. Kerry and Biden that that's why we shouldn't torture?
I'm disagreeing with Kerry and Biden, and I believe that men in war will always torture somebody.
That's not the reason why governments shouldn't or should not do it.
So you're just saying it's not effective.
I don't think it's effective.
I think it wastes time.
And on top of it, I think it does something to the American psyche to believe that.
So if you want to pull people together in this war effort, you don't do those things because that's how you get you have to have a sense of being correct in a war and your conduct to actually win.
Well, again, the only thing I can do is quote from what we know of, the CIA reports, detailing that the slapping and the hypothermia and the sleep deprivation and the stress positions.
They say it's not torture, but many people are saying it is, certainly the Democrats in Congress and other critics.
And they say that it has been especially effective in breaking hard cases rapidly.
Reportedly, the technique was used against al-Qaeda mastermind Khalid Shalik Mohammed.
You know what?
I don't believe that the same way I don't believe other things because if I'm a crazy nut, which most of those people are, if I'm going to be a crazy nut, there's no way that I'm going to break that easy.
You just don't.
Really?
No, you don't.
I don't think their temerity is quite as profound as you do.
I don't think their courage is quite.
I mean, if they were that courageous, they wouldn't be sending little boys around the world with bombs to blow themselves up.
Well, I think that they're crazy, and crazy people do not think like the rest of us.
And I know when I was training for my black belt, we did some very crazy things, and I was black and blue and all that stuff.
There are people, when you're in that mindset, you actually enjoy seeing how much you can take.
And those kind of people are not going to break, just like John McCain didn't break.
Well, that's a long story, but I don't want to get into that right now.
Shona, thanks so much, and I do appreciate your comments.
Points so noted.
I'm Jason Lewis, 1-800-282-2882.
You're on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
We are back on the Rush Limbaugh program.
I'm Jason Lewis filling in for El Rushboat today as he's on the Rush to Excellence tour in Philadelphia.
But fear not, he shall return tomorrow back here in the Attila of the Hun chair behind the golden EIB mic.
Certain to have more fun than a human being should be allowed.
In Gainesville, Florida, here's John.
You're on with Jason Lewis on EIB.
Hi.
Hey, Jason.
I just turned into your program about 30 minutes ago, and you are making a point essentially that we went to war in Iraq not only because of so-called weapons of mass destruction, which I'm not going to go into,
but essentially we wanted to bring Iraq democracy in order for it to be a beacon for the rest of the Arab world so that they change their ways and stop turning towards radicalism and terrorism.
Well, I have to vehemently disagree with you, and let me just, hopefully, you'll allow me to make my points.
Sure.
But I just want to say that for me, as a student, I'm a Muslim and an Arab, and I try to be a student, a prudent student of the history of the region that I'm from.
And to me, when I look at the history, essentially, U.S. foreign policy in that region has been fundamentally to protect U.S. interests despite the consequences that it causes for the people of the region.
And all you have to do, and I'll just give you a couple examples, and then I'll be off.
You have to.
Well, why don't you start, excuse me, but why don't you start with letting Jimmy Carter undercut the Shah of Iran?
That was precisely geared to answer your criticism.
We can't have a Shah of Iran who's a puppet.
Did that work out pretty well for the United States?
That did not work out well for the United States, but you have to understand that the people of the country didn't necessarily like him either because he had secret police.
He was very oppressive.
Yeah, well, good thing Ahmadinejad is a Democrat.
He's not a Democrat, and I don't agree with a lot of his principles or anything like that.
But my point is, if you look back into the history of it, go back to Iraq in the 80s when we supported them against Iran.
It was for strategic interest because Iran had become our enemy by becoming Islamic theocracy.
In every country, in every part of the Iranian world, hold on, hold on.
In every country in every part of the world has shifting alliances.
At Yalta, we got in bed with Uncle Joe Stalin.
Some of us still, and we're still, we paid for that for 50 years in a Cold War, but nevertheless, we did it to defeat Germany.
Now, 10 years later, we're in a Cold War with the Soviet Union.
Should we have said, oh, we're going to be, you know, this is sort of like the Jimmy Carter foreign policy.
We're not going to have any alliances whatsoever if they don't adopt our human rights ACLU policy.
That's not the way the real world works.
That is not the way the real world works.
But, I mean, one main example, which I haven't gotten to yet, is our support for Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is a more despotic regime than Iran, period.
They don't have even a parliament.
And we have supported them.
They have been our greatest ally in the Middle East even before Israel was created.
Now they're our greatest Arab ally.
And Egypt is another excellent example.
That's the country that I'm from.
And we have had a dictatorial regime for 26 years now.
And the U.S. has supported it for 26 years by giving it the most aid, second most aid in the world to Israel.
And as recently as 2005, when a little bit of pressure was put on the U.S. to have some sort of democratic elections, in the parliamentary elections, the Muslim Brotherhood started to win some seats.
And they are gaining the rights.
They ran elections and rounds.
They ran those elections and rounds.
And what happened was, as they saw the Muslim Brotherhood start gaining seats, Mubarak was told the U.S., okay, look what's happening.
Is this what you want?
They cut off the elections and that's the point, isn't it?
Wait, wait, wait.
John, that's the point.
I mean, is that what we want?
Do you want the Muslim Brotherhood to control Egypt?
Do you want those that are teaching young Saudi Arabian kids the methods of al-Qaeda?
Do you want them to take control?
Do you want to repeat the Iran experience in the entire region?
I'm not saying I do, but I'm saying we can't say as our goal, it's for us to bring them tomocracy.
Because if they have the right to choose their own, that's my understanding of democracy.
If they have the right to choose their own government, then let them choose.
Well, should we have rebuilt Japan?
Should we have rebuilt Japan, rebuilt Europe after World War II, installed constitutions and democracies and ways of government?
Should we have done that?
Told them they couldn't have a military?
I'm not a historian on World War II, but I think my point is this.
I do think that your points, quite frankly, some of them are very good, but I do think that there was a sincere effort to reach out.
Now, it may not work out because some of the tribal loyalties in Iraq may be stronger than any loyalty towards the country.
You take a look at the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shias.
But the point is there was a sincere effort to reach out to a moderate Arabic influence or moderate Arab influence there to try to show a different way.
I don't know why people are so eager to condemn that.
And let me remind you, there is evidence right now that some of this is working.
In fact, I believe we had some success just yesterday or the day before killing a number of al-Qaeda insurgents.
And you've got Sunnis and Shias working together in some provinces to form their own police units now.
So I don't think it's quite as easy to just willy-nilly and say, gee, we're going to leave that place in a vacuum.
We're just going to leave and see what happens.
And by the way, a number of the Sunni countries, even Syria, are terrified of that, terrified of the United States leaving because they fear a Shia Crescent.
Agree, definitely, because they also have a Shia minority.
But let me just, one last thing, and then I'll get off.
Again, going back to history, after the first invasion of Iraq, there was a small Shia rebellion.
And that would have been, that would have, it may have not overthrown Saddam Hussein, but essentially our policy at that point to Saddam Hussein was, hey, you have the green light to suppress that rebellion.
Because, again, it was our interest.
Right.
I hate to break this to you.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Here's where we do agree.
I've got to let you go, but here's where perhaps we do agree.
That is the approach we should take to Iran.
We should do everything we did in the Cold War to encourage those students in Iran to frankly revolt.
1-800-282-2882, the contact line for the Rush Limbaugh program.
I am Jason Lewis filling in for El Rushbo.
He'll be back tomorrow.
Colorado Senator, Ken Salazar, I should say, wants to censure Rush Limbaugh.
He wants to support a Senate vote to censure Rush Limbaugh.
Guys got a little too much time on their hands out there in Colorado?
What?
Or in Washington, D.C.?
This is just remarkable stuff.
Can you imagine any of this happening to the editorial board of the hardcore left-wing L.A. Times?
Can you imagine somebody talking, we need to censure these editorial writers, the New York Times, the Washington Post, which once in a while, you know, gets it right.
Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then.
But the point here is, can you imagine this being done to any printed medium?
Of course not.
Now, how on earth could you suggest, could you possibly suggest it ought to be done to the spoken medium without violating the First Amendment?
This, friends, this is what the left does.
I don't care whether it's the Ortega brothers in Nicaragua.
I don't care whether it's Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, or Uncle Joe Stalin.
The first thing they do when they gain power is to shut down the press.
Witness the examples I just gave you.
Why?
Because they cannot tolerate the disinfectant of debate.
Absolutely cannot tolerate it.
Liberalism will always, will always end at the butt of a gun because fundamentally it is there to make people do what they naturally don't want to do.
Give up more of their own money, give up more of their own health care, shut up and be censured.
You can go right down the list.
Oh, and of course, no smoking in your apartment building, no smoking in your car.
Welcome to California, friends.
This is your state.
California is your state on drugs.
Yeah, they're passing a law out there in the golden state now.
Let's see, where is it here?
Yeah, they've banned smoking now.
California motorists will risk fines of up to $100 next year if they are caught smoking in cars with minors.
This is the third state, so I guess we really do have a drug abuse problem, the third state to protect children in vehicles from secondhand smoke, even though the WHO, Harvard, federal judge down in North Carolina years ago that said the pretensions or the pretense of 3,000 dead from secondhand smoke was total fiction.
Would somebody show me the coroner's report of someone who died of secondhand smoke?
When I see that, I might start to look at some of this nonsensical evidence.
And besides, you know, if you really take a look at this from an economist's point of view, the way we regulate pollution in society, we regulate it as an externality.
If I pollute the river and it goes into your property, if I pollute the sky and you have to breathe the air, that is what economists call an externality.
And an externality is regulated because I shouldn't be able to use the air or the water as a dumping ground.
Where is the externality or the external effect in my own car?
Where's the external effect in a bar or a restaurant or a bowling alley in California or now Minnesota?
You can entirely avoid those externalities.
And yet now California have given final approval, or officials in Belmont, California, I guess, have given final approval to a new smoking ban in your condo or apartment.
Yes, I can see that smoke seeping through the walls of the condo.
This is nanny state liberalism.
It is total control.
These are the busybodies in sixth grade who at the end of the class period raised their hand and said, you forgot to give us homework.
These are the people running the country.
Why is it?
These people have this bizarre sociopathic obsession with regulating my life or your life.
It's not a coincidence the S-CHIP nonsense had a $10 cigar tax on it and is going to be funded by gouging the poor with a cigarette tax.
This is what Hillary care will come to.
In fact, where's that article about John Edwards I had here in front of me I wanted to bring to your attention because it is scary, absolutely scary.
Edwards is trying to mimic Hillary and he does a pretty good job in more ways than one.
And he was talking about his health care plan and how, shall we say, enthusiastic he would be in imposing his health care plan on the rest of the country.
This was down in Iowa not long ago, I do believe.
And he said, my universal health care system would, quote, require that everybody be covered and require that everybody get preventative care.
If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years.
He went on to say that women would be required to have mammograms at the first trace of a problem.
Now, think about the possibilities here.
What did I tell you earlier about government rationing?
They're going to pay for the bill, therefore they're going to control your activity because they're going to have to ration.
There's not enough money.
And when they start to ration, they say, gee, you're overweight.
You need an exercise program, and you will have one.
You need to cut out this food and that food.
You'd like to have a beer after work?
Oh, those days are gone.
And if you smoke, heaven forbid, well, we're just not going to give you treatment.
This is where this is going.
The nanny state liberalism from cradle to grave.
And if somebody doesn't stand up pretty soon, if the GOP does not rediscover its Reagan roots and start fighting this intrusion into our personal lives by the neo-prohibitionists, well, as Rush likes to say, the frog is going to get so hot, it's going to be too late in the boiling water.
Back to the phones we go.
Rebecca in Grand Rapids, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program with Jason Lewis.
Hi.
Hi, Jason.
How are you?
I'm doing wonderful.
How are you?
Good.
I'm calling because this morning I was just catching a couple minutes of the Today Show, and Matt Lauer was on with a guest talking about.
My apologies.
My three-year-old turned on the TV.
Otherwise, I wouldn't have been watching it.
But anyway, he had a guest on talking about the top 10 cities to visit worldwide and within the U.S.
And the guest said one of the best cities to visit worldwide was Damascus.
And I'm assuming Camascus.
I know, I was shocked.
I'm like, isn't that the headquarters of Hezbollah?
Are these people like totally ignorant of that?
Well, that is just, what's wrong?
Baghdad wasn't available?
Oh, I don't know.
I guess not.
Yeah, well, look, the next thing you know, Chris Matthews is going to moderate a Republican debate.
Whoops, too late on that one.
Did you see what Fred Thompson?
I mean, Fred Thompson was the only guy that really threw it back at Christopher Matthews.
I love that.
At the end of the debate, he was asking him about whether the government should intrude on a labor management dispute.
And Fred Thompson says, no, shouldn't.
And then he went on to explain, and Matthews interjects, you should have left it just at no.
And Thompson shot back, oh, really?
Well, what's your opinion, Christopher?
Talking to him like he's about eight years old, shut him up entirely.
It was a wonderful thing.
You know, the other thing that's going on here, Rebecca, regardless of getting right on the issues, you know, you can't be a good conservative and support S-CHIP and support all of these other liberal schemes.
You just can't.
But once we get it right on the issues and rediscover Ronald Reagan, you know what you have to also be willing to do is fight.
And you just time and time again, I hear the grassroots Rebecca say, what's wrong with our guys?
Why don't they fight back?
Why don't they give as good as they get?
It's a growing frustration in the ranks of the Republican Party.
Let's squeeze in David in Albany.
You're next on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
Hi.
Hi, Jason.
Thanks for taking my call.
Appreciate all you're doing and Rush and especially Rush's military program.
Tracy and Karen in Alabama signed me up on that and I'm very pleased to have that.
That's a really wonderful thing and I think you appreciate that gift.
This guy, Rush Limbaugh, has done more publicly and privately for the troops than anybody knows.
And for a guy who lies about his record in Vietnam, Senator Tom Harkin, to go after Limbaugh is the epitome of hypocrisy.
It's also the epitome of insult because we're sitting out here in the trenches and we know the difference and he thinks that we're not going to catch that and that's what's insulting.
I'd like to get to the S-CHIP program.
I don't know what's going on with, you know, I don't know what's going on with Iowa.
You got Grassley promoting the S-CHIP program.
You got Harkin, you know, going after Limbaugh.
I would say it's in the water in Iowa, but it must be in the ethanol.
It must be in the ethanol, maybe in the corn mash that they're drinking.
I don't know.
The Senator Clinton Health Insurance Takeover Program is what I'm calling it because S-CHIP just seems to fit perfectly.
Because we have a track record.
It's really funny.
A lot of people have asked, you know, just in conversations, what has she done?
What has she ever actually achieved?
I still can't find much in the senatorial record of her achieving much of anything, let alone trying to take this over.
But we do have one track record that stands out.
When in Arkansas, she messed with the health care system there.
It was a mess.
It just got messier.
It just got more expensive.
And she comes to be first lady, and next thing you know, we're dealing with a program that is just amazingly bad, developed in secret, and we're supposed to sit there and take it.
They don't think that this program that she wants is not redressed.
Does anybody?
It's the same thing, just packaged differently.
Precisely.
I mean, it is precisely the same thing.
Look at the figures.
This is not ensuring low-income.
Now, the program in its infancy, in its embryonic stages, and it still does, to a degree, ensure low-income children.
Don't get me wrong.
The expansion and the way the states are using it is to ensure able-bodied adults with healthy incomes.
Now, if that isn't a takeover, when you've got the CBO reporting that for every two that sign up for S-CHIP, one leaves private health insurance, that's just too clever by half here.
You know, and you've got the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation running these silly ads.
They were the same one, the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, that underwrote Hillary's Potemkin healthcare town meeting back in, what was it, 94, 95?
So you couldn't be more correct.
17 now in front of the hour.
I am Jason Lewis filling in for Rush Limbaugh on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.
Hey, Rush, we'll be back tomorrow, ensconced in the Attila the Hun chair.
In the meantime, I've got talent on loan from Rush, Jason Lewis from Minneapolis, Minnesota, the land of 10,000 loons, as I like to say.
Anyway, trying to keep things going here at 1-800-282-2882.
I liked Snerdley's comments yesterday, though.
If we're going to have an S-CHIP program, and we're going to ensure able-bodied adults with middle-class incomes at the very least, some as high as $70,000.
What about Snerdley's idea of a, what did you call it?
A personal chef.
Was it S-Chef?
S-Chef program.
Now, I'm thinking about John Edwards' health plan, Hillary's health plan, where they would control everything you do.
That might be, you know, you could get a grant for that and do it.
I mean, just this morning, Snerdley, I'm getting my shirt on, getting ready to go and fill in for Rush, getting all excited, putting my shirt on, and my wife says to me, hey, Jason, where do you get those shirts with the stomachs in them?
And I'm thinking to myself, I need the S-Chef program.
1-800-282-2882, Richard in Dallas, you're on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hi.
Come on.
How are you, sir?
Good.
Doing just fine.
I've been listening to Rush since 91, and I finally get a chance to call, and what do I get?
A guy from Minnesota.
Well, it's your lucky day.
Hey, I was a pilot with the Navy during Vietnam.
My son's an academy grad, U.S. Army Ranger, airborne special ops.
You had a lady call earlier concerning boarding and torture and so on.
He's been through that training.
Waterboarding is not a physical torture.
It is psychological.
The most die-hard fanatic within 45 seconds basically breaks under waterboarding and will tell you virtually anything because they believe they're going to drown.
Well, if it isn't torture, why do they break?
They break because they look, you can define torture whatever you want.
Waterboarding.
Yeah, waterboarding is psychological, not physical.
You believe you're going to drown, and your mind won't let you do that.
And you will tell almost anything.
The troops that we have that go through it go through it so they know what it's like, just in case.
And my son has told me the longest person that he knows, or the person who went through it the longest before they broke, if you will, was 45 seconds.
So you're suggesting, as the CIA has suggested, as the administration is tacitly suggesting this stuff works.
Yes, it does work.
They will tell you almost anything.
Some of it may be real, some of it's not, but then you at least have something you can track down.
It's not like breaking fingers or breaking thumbs or like the late.
Well, but some people, look, but if you convince someone they're going to die, they could have a heart attack.
I mean, that is, some would say, certainly the liberal left is saying that's psychological torture.
All right, fine.
But the point is, it does work.
There's the answer.
There's the answer America wants to hear from a politician.
Why, that's psychological torture.
Okay, fine.
Next question.
This is like health care.
It is a winnable issue for the GOP, for the conservative cause, for the people that want to protect America, that sort of thing, free market types, like healthcare, if you're willing to sell it.
I mean, if you just run around like the mainstream media do and say, do you believe in torture?
Most people are going to say, Richard, well, no, I don't.
Now, if you say, look, do you believe that we ought to deprive people of sleep or even use waterboarding, if it means we discover where a nuclear device is planted in downtown Dallas?
You know what the poll numbers are going to be then?
About 75 or 80% in the affirmative.
And that's, you know, but you've got to be willing to go out there and sell that.
You've got to be willing to confront these issues head on.
You have to, but the troops will tell you, according to my son, that they know that the Geneva Convention isn't going to play for them.
If they get caught, they're going to die no matter what we do.
No.
Why, the next thing you're going to tell me is the Soviets cheated on arms control.
Did they?
Gee, I'm shocked.
Yeah, when Berlin Wall fell, we found out that they had all sorts of violations on the INF accords.
They had a radar system that was in violation of the ABM Treaty and all the rest.
But the liberals, they believe in that moral symmetry that we were just as responsible for the ills of the Cold War as they were.
So we had to sign a paper security agreement.
You're right.
That is what's driving this.
This notion of that there's no difference between us and them.
I really believe that.
Therefore, we can't torture, so they won't torture.
But as you point out and your son points out, that is a fool's gold.
Last thing I'd like to say.
Jimmy Carter is an idiot.
Are you running for something?
And that's all I can say about that.
Yeah, really.
I mean, think, well, Jimmy Carter, what Richard is referring to, of course, is he came out last, I believe it was last night and said this administration is torturing people.
It engages in torture.
The administration is using torture.
Jimmy Carter tortured the American economy for four years.
You know, talk about subprime crisis.
Can anybody remember 21.5% prime rate, 13% inflation, 8%, 9% unemployment, a misery index that made Gerald Ford look like Ronald Reagan?
I mean, this economy was in shambles under Jimmy Carter.
Not to mention, you had the Soviets on the move in Afghanistan.
You had them on the move in Central America.
And what did he do?
A great embargo, and we're going to boycott the Olympics.
That's leadership, gang.
I'm Jason Lewis in for Rush Limbaugh, back right after this.
All right, we are back.
Jason Lewis here, Minnesota's Mr. Wright, with the honor and the privilege to fill in in this excursion into broadcast excellence today.
This Thursday, by the way, coming up next hour, Hillary Clinton says she'll have to get past the men challenging her for the Democratic presidential nomination because Iowa, what is it, Iowa and Mississippi, I believe, have never sent a woman to Congress.
So she says in Iowa, she's not campaigning on her gender.
You know, she's not asking you to vote for her because she's a woman, but because she's most qualified.
Then why is she talking about female issues?
You know, I'm going to talk about that next hour.
It says, what men?
What?
I'm talking about John Edwards, General Edwards.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Well, you get the gist of it.
She says, I was so touched the first time I shook the hand of a woman, and she reached out and grabbed my hand and said to me, I'm 95 years old.
I was born before women could vote, and I'm going to live long enough to see a woman in the White House.